It’s been a fantastique few weeks for Pierre Furlan, the French translator of writers Elizabeth Knox, Alan Duff and Geoff Cush.

Furlan (pictured) arrived in Nouvelle-Zélande in late October, having won a residency at the Randell Cottage.

Then one of his French clients, Laurent Gaudé, promptly won the Goncourt prize - France's most prestigieux literary accolade.

Furlan was unable to attend the celebrations, but his own fiction should enjoy a trickle-down effect on sales from the Goncourt win. He’s working on his own writing while in Godzone, and last week gave a talk on 'creative mistakes' in literary translation at a Victoria University seminar.

PS: Google’s handy translation tool means that you can now read this page in French. Or German, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian. C'est merveilleux!